Christopher Nuttall: The Fall of Night

The interior of the building looked like a palace; the interior decorations alone had cost more than the richest man in America brought home in one year. A giant portrait of Napoleon I took up most of one wall, other portraits of famous military leaders dominated the remainder of the ground floor. Someone unfamiliar with the military might have been impressed; Fanaroff, who had volunteered for the army, could see the weaknesses… and knew enough to know who had been left out. Bomber Harris, Rommel, Petain, Bismarck…

“I could take a suitcase bomb in here, blow it up, and do EUROFOR a vast favour,” he muttered, as their escort finally appeared. “Remember, be nice to the poor gentleman.”

“Welcome to EUROFOR HQ,” the young man said. His uniform was so spotless that Fanaroff immediately deduced that he had never seen active service. “I have been ordered to escort you before the Commission.”

“Thank you,” Fanaroff said. “Lead on.”

He amused himself with making notes about how dangerous the building was for anyone unlucky enough to get caught up in a bomb attack; the Europeans hadn’t even created a clear air space around Brussels. The only countries that had done anything like that were the French and the British, both of whom had faced terrorist attempts to use airliners as weapons. The guards weren’t armed… and while he was sure that there was a security force nearby that could stand off a major attack, the real danger was a quick strike, not a major attack. A single airliner could wipe out much of the European Union’s high command.

“I am afraid that your aide will have to remain outside,” the escort said, as they reached the big doors. “Please would you come this way?”

The office was large enough to play football in, Fanaroff considered; it was only a slight exaggeration. It was more luxurious than the Oval Office and considerably less practical; the five men in the office turned to face him as he entered. One of them wore a European Service Uniform — the equivalent of American BDUs — the others wore the more flamboyant dress uniforms of REMFs. Fanaroff knew General Konrad Trautman by reputation; the others he had met from time to time in an official capacity.

“Welcome to EUROFOR HQ,” General Henri Guichy said. He carried the additional title of Commissioner, as France’s official representative to the European Defence Committee, the closest thing that Europe had to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Fanaroff had long ago creased wondering which tail wagged which dog. The EDC had vast power and influence in Europe… and its structure was such that it promoted paper-pushers, rather than fighters, to high rank. “I was quite surprised when you requested this meeting.”

I bet you were , Fanaroff thought. He took a moment to study Trautman with care; the German, at least, was a real combat soldier. There were some who wondered if he was the real heir to General Éclair, not a thought that would please Guichy and his kind. The brown-haired General looked competent enough; his posting to Poland had been proclaimed as Europe’s reaction to Poland’s unjustified fears about the Russians. Fanaroff suspected, along with several others in the American defence establishment, that those fears were not so unjustified after all.

“I have been asked to convoy some information from Langley,” he said, referring to the catch-all term for American Intelligence, in particular the CIA. The information had been gathered from a dozen different sources, but it had been an overworked analyst in the CIA who had put it all together. “The White House was keen that you heard the information as quickly as possible.”

Guichy shrugged and waved them all to chairs. “One hopes that this information is more accurate than the vaunted American search for weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “You must understand that Brussels is hardly going to jump into action at the command of the American President, no matter how important she is.”

“Of course,” Fanaroff said, unwilling to argue politics with either Guichy or one of his people. He opened his briefcase and pulled out a small secure datachip. “I assume that you have a reader here with biometric sensors?”

Guichy nodded and passed him the reader. Fanaroff inserted the chip and placed his hand on the sensor, allowing the reader to confirm that he, Colonel Fanaroff, was permitted to access the information on the chip and share it with others on the cleared list. The CIA and the other intelligence services collected thousands of gigabytes worth of information on everything under the sun; the problem was in using the information before it was too late.

“You will know, of course, that the first Russian surge of troops into Belarus occurred in 2018, following a request by the Dictator to protect himself and his cronies from their own people,” Fanaroff said. It had been one of the few things that Europe and America had actually been in agreement upon; it was a bad thing. Both nations had protested, to no avail. “Four years later, the Russians surged more troops into the country and sealed the borders; those units included armoured divisions, attack helicopters, and other units that seemed useless for a counter-insurgency operation.”

“And the Poles panicked,” Guichy snapped. “I remember.”

“You didn’t have other problems at the time,” Fanaroff said. “The Russians have been fuming about the actions of the Baltic States against the Russians living within the states… and you have been backing the Baltic States. But… the Russians have been shipping weapons, including Scud missiles, to Algeria… and other weapons to Argentina. The British have already had to dispatch a major force to the South Atlantic; what about the danger of Algeria?”

Guichy looked up at him. “The Algerians do not have the capability to launch an attack on Europe,” he said. “They might fire missiles at us, but they will all be downed by the Patriot missiles that we purchased from you at vast expense.”

Fanaroff took a breath. “There is also the fact that the Russians have been backing the pro-Russian factions in the Ukraine,” he said. “You have two regiments, one Swedish, one Irish, providing peacekeeping forces in the region; you’re overstretched and the Russians are pouring on the pressure.”

“The Poles have been worried about the safety of their borders since the first cross-border raid,” Trautman said slowly. Guichy shot him a ‘shut up’ look that he ignored. “Still, I would hardly call that pouring on the pressure.”

Fanaroff frowned. “What is EUROFOR’s position when it comes to Ukraine?”

Guichy matched his frown. “Our orders from the European Parliament are to maintain the peace of the region, safe in the knowledge that the long-term interests of Europe will be satisfied by Ukraine becoming prosperous, and then joining the European Union as a full and equal member.”

“Interesting concept,” Fanaroff said. He paused, just long enough to make them nervous. “What about the Russian attitude to all of this?”

Guichy blinked. “I do beg your pardon?”

“A while back, you offered to buy Kaliningrad off them, following the independence demonstrations that took place in the Oblast,” Fanaroff said, as calmly as he could. “The Russians reacted with speed and fury; they sent in thousands of airborne soldiers and muscled the Lithuanian forces into allowing them passage through Lithuanian territory. Thousands of refugees fled west… while hundreds of others were shipped into Russia and sent to the gulags.”

“There are no such things these days,” Guichy protested.

“I can show you the satellite photographs, if you would like,” Fanaroff said. “It hardly matters; the point is that Kaliningrad is now a loyal component of the Russian Federation, which has also reabsorbed Belarus, most of the Central Asian states and, for the first time since 1960, no longer has a threat in the east to worry about. The Chinese Civil War has seen to that.